Thread by @MLiebreich

The long-delayed @LondonAssembly Transport Committee report on bus and tram safety has been published. I speak as a former chair of the TfL board's safety panel, and frankly, I find it an insult to the ~6,000 people killed and injured every year by buses and trams in London. 1/9

https://twitter.com/LondonAssembly/status/1289192842087276546

Context. In the aftermath of the Sandilands tram crash, @TfL failed to pass on a critical fatigue audit to investigators. The failure was never investigated. In July 2019 the @LondonAssembly passed a resolution calling on the Mayor to appoint an independent investigator. 2/9

I was keen to testify to the @LondonAssembly enquiry, but successive @UKLabour chairs of the Transport Committee tried to block me in order to spare @SadiqKhan from embarassment. In the end they failed, and I did my best to raise my concerns. 3/9

At the time of my testimony, I only knew about TfL's failure to pass on one fatigue audit to investigators. I later learned there were irregularities handling an earlier audit. I wrote to the head of the RAIB pointing out its report is deeply flawed. 4/9
drive.google.com/file/d/1KOia-0…

Today's report by the @LondonAssembly Transport Committee fails to reiterate the majority decision of the full Assembly to call on the Mayor to appoint an independent investigation. To their credit, the Conservative and Brexit Members therefore dissented. 5/9

During my verbal testimony we didn't get to buses. The way @TfL contracts with bus companies is #InstitutionallyUnsafe, incentivising speed over safety, ignoring fatigue and poor working conditions. So I submitted written testimony to the enquiry. 6/9
drive.google.com/file/d/1_3RG77…

The authors of today's @LondonAssembly report entirely ignored my written testimony, as I knew they would, so it's a whitewash. Luckily the Transport Committee wrote an an excellent report in 2017 called Driven to Distraction. Read it instead. 7/9
london.gov.uk/about-us/londo…

All this was before #Covid19, which killed at least 34 bus workers. When @MichaelMarmot was appointed to review the causes, I urged him to look into their working conditions and @TfL's lack of care. Sadly, he allowed @TfL to feed him data instead. 8/9
drive.google.com/file/d/1pygFVJ…

The @LondonAssembly is failing to hold the Mayor and TfL to account (and the London press has done no better). It's not just bus drivers during Covid-19 who suffer: it's a 24/7/365 problem for all of us. Next time you see @SadiqKhan talking about #VisionZero, remember this. 9/9

Coda: I think the Sarah Hope line is fantastic and the work Sarah and the team do is incredibly valuable. But why has @LondonAssembly chosen to promote a victim support line - instead of demanding that the Mayor and @TfL fix their #InstitutionallyUnsafe bus and tram services?